Understanding the impacts of intensive coal mining on groundwater systems is crucial for sustainable water resource management in arid/semi-arid regions. Traditional perspectives, however, have focused predominantly on aquifer disruption by water-flowing fractured zones while overlooking hydraulic drive effects in aquifers beyond fractured domains. Addressing this gap, we investigate mining areas in northwestern China's arid/semiarid regions through an integrated approach: First, groundwater-level monitoring confirms phreatic decline at approximately 1 m/year, showing negligible correlation with meteorological variations. Second, based on the spatial configuration of coal-water systems and systemic analysis, we classify phreatic aquifer disturbance into direct disturbance and indirect disturbance, and the drawdown results from concurrent direct and indirect disturbances. Finally, numerical simulations project persistent Quaternary phreatic groundwater level declines under both models, indicating that without water-preserved mining techniques, sustained extraction will accelerate aquifer depletion. This research broadens theoretical frameworks for assessing mining impacts on groundwater resources and provides scientific foundations for water resource governance in vulnerable ecosystems.